Аннотация:In June, 1992, the Chicago City Council passed a loitering ordinance that gave police officers exceptionally broad power to disperse any group of two or more people standing in public if the police suspect that the group includes a gang member.! Any person who does not promptly obey an order to disperse is subject to arrest and six months in prison.The law's language is deliberately expansive to allow the police to clean up the streets based on their suspicions of gang membership rather than waiting for a crime to take place.During the three years the law was in effect, it yielded arrests of more than 40,000 citizens, most of whom were Black or Latino residents of inner-city neighbor-
